as well, kissing first me and then Joe on each of our cheeks.
Joe beamed. " Looks like pretty good wine," he said, holding up the Châteauneuf.
We returned home to a pile of scripts for me to read. All I wanted was to bask in springtime New York, rest up and be normal again, cook us dinner, walk the city, visit friends. Instead I picked up walking pneumonia. "At least I get to be here for longer," I told Joe. "No one would hire me now. I look like an old sock." He nursed me with teas and soups and antibiotics. I slept while he wrote, the cats keep ing vigil at the foot of the bed. I weeded through the pile of mostly junk scripts as spring outside heated up toward summer. By the end of July I was back at work, on location in New Orleans, a supporting role again. Whatever cachet I'd gained from the Cannes win had little currency across the Atlantic. Harry blamed the haircut.
I finished my bowl of cereal and, tiptoeing, took a shower and dressed.It was ten o'clock. No signs of life from Andre under his pillow. His cell phone, on vibrate, rock-'n'-rolled on the dining table. I looped the MAID Please Make Up This Room sign, on the side that showed a sleeping, smiling quarter moon and a Do Not Disturb message, over the door and went out. One of the maids I'd seen before down at the main hotel greeted me in Spanish. The others spoke to me in Spanish first too. I have picked up a blush of sun on my naturally pale olive skin, but do I look Latin? Andre tells me I am secretly Ethiopian, calling me his dark mistress. I am occasionally taken for Mediterranean but never for a great beauty, though my grandmother would have had me believe otherwise. "Striking" has been used to describe me in reviews. Godard's Anna Karina comes to mind: unassumingly sexual, but look closely and the nose is just the wrong side of big, the teeth a disappointment, the mouth wide for her angular chin, yet so intriguing on camera, even into her sixties. Or take Anouk Aimée: Is she beautiful? Is she in a class with the gold heat of Bardot or Grace Kelly's burnished radiance? What is beauty anyway? I mean, what does it mean? Joe always said beauty had to be earned. Good thing the camera liked me because in person I think I'm funny- looking, with big light brown hair and faded blue eyes, large teeth— none of it quite going with my skin tone. I don't know about all this supposed darkness either. Andre says it comes from the inside. Does he mean that I am dark, as a metaphor?
"A metaphor, yes," he once said. "But, more, you are not white."
I look white to me, in the mirror. Maybe the darkness metaphor is why I was offered so few leads.
Annoyed, Andre told me I knew perfectly well the camera ate me alive and served me up to a responsive audience. I didn't respond that I knew nothing perfectly well. And he didn't add that I couldn't expect the lead if I quit.
Leaving him to his sleep, I walked down the steep hill, out the heavy security gate and on down to the avenue, pulling my new magenta silk scarf closer around my neck. The verdigris cotton sweater I'd tossed on was not sufficient against the morning chill so I walked faster. At least the jeans and sneakers made sense as I practically trotted to Hollywood Boulevard. When I lived and worked here I never walked the Walk of Fame. I tried not to step directly on the actors' names. I've never heard of half the immortalized stars; why, for example, did Dolores Hope merit a star?
I moved along in my usual interior way, taking in the street while trying to remain invisible. "What?" I said, sensing someone pushing through my barrier. It's not unusual for me to be mentally miles away.
"Excuse me," said a youngish man. I think it might have been for the third time. " Would you agree to be interviewed for television?"
"What?" Luckily my sunglasses were large and dark.
"It's for the Style Network."
I thought, sure, Hollywood Boulevard: Jason from Friday the13th, Elvis, Batman, Darth Vader, Tinker Bell out trolling for tourists dumb enough to pay to have their photos taken with them; why not a pseudo TV shoot? I assumed I was supposed to be impressed, flattered, the tourist rube from Podunk suddenly on TV. "Why me?" I said, sarcastic. "Do I look stylish?"
"Yes," he said, "as a matter of fact, you do." And, pronto, a camera was thrust in my face, and a miniboom. Out of nowhere the personnel appeared, including the babe who would interview me, made up to seduce: coiffed, petite, pretty and perky. The director took over, telling me what questions I'd be asked. "It's about a new perfume," he explained, upbeat and positive, as if he were making an important feature, not a grade- B infomercial. Another fellow held high a smoky- glassed bottle of perfume, reached for my wrist, and sprayed two clouds of an organic, peaty, nighttime scent.
The camera started to roll. "No!" I said palms up to protect my face. "No, no, no!"
The camera stopped. The operator peered out from behind his giant lens. "Hang on a minute," he said, "isn't that—" He turned to the director. "Isn't she—"
"I'm sorry. I have to go."
I hurried away, past the pretend made incarnate: Darth and Elvis, Edward Scissorhands, Freddy Krueger, Dorothy complete with a stuffed Toto. I walked on. I stopped when I came to Frederick's of Hollywood, still selling sexpot lingerie after all these years. I looked in the window, remembering seeing a Frederick's catalog as a child, but where? Whose? My long- widowed grandmother? My mother? I remembered a sense of arousal, looking at the pointy brassieres and revealing nighties at a time when I was only just becoming aware of arousal. Busty women with blond, bouffant dos; breasts pushed into bra cups, nearly spilling out; pasties and G- strings and see- through panties— it got my attention then and now. I moved on when a guy sidled up to me and I saw us reflected in the window, him too close. I pictured the unsheathed penis- under- a- raincoat cliché and moved on, past other sex boutiques with names like For Play and Naughty, and bong shops and cheap eateries, the seedier part of the boulevard where you might not want to be immortalized with a star. Here stains and chewing gum marred the pink stars trimmed in gold. If they ever get around to giving me a place on the Walk of Fame it'll be in this unglamorous, stagnant stretch: punishment for quitting. I didn't slow down again until I was at the corner of Vine.
I was just walking. I had nowhere to be and was in no hurry to get there. I stopped in front of a kiosk of postcards, two for fifty cents. They were not the most up- to- date and they'd been out on the rack a while, curling in on themselves and sun- faded. I picked out four. I asked the man inside who took my dollar what else he sold. "Posters," he said. "Pictures of the stars, gen- U- ine autographs," he added, emphasizing the last word as if letting me in on a steamy secret. Would he have an autographed image of me lying about somewhere, on the off chance? There were photos of me in existence, even posters, but I doubted this fellow had any.
"A real Hollywood store," I said, peering briefly over my glasses, letting him think I believed him. Plenty of suckers would.
"Yup," he said; a friendly schlump in his dump of a shop. I'd bet an arm he didn't have a single original autograph, but a truckload of fakes. The whole concept was sickening anyway: a sorry, sad public willing to play along, to be photographed with an actor posing as a character from a movie, twice- removed- from- reality Tinsel Town. And the fans: praying to touch the magic, shamelessly begging for a glance, a smile, the contact of a handshake equaling bliss, waiting hours along the ropes for their favorite star to stroll by in a tux or sequined gown, roaring as the limo doors opened. An old Kinks song came to me— the name wouldn't— I used to sing it at parties. This was after Fits, some other, forgettable guy on my arm. I was working again, staying busy and dumb and distracted. I'd devel oped a post- Joe ironic tongue, as if I were channeling him to make up for what I'd become. I took most of the parts Harry sent my way, auditioned, returned calls; wore my hair long and done up by the right salon, fitted dresses when I had to, slouchy on my own, though, the real me sometimes having trouble making it out of the house, in horror of being seen.
I drew the line at nudity. I was probably too
